Lighting Challenge #6: Candle Light

#101

Really nice smoke effect, it looks very real Triker! How did you make it? Is it a simulation?

Edit: new version, trying more with the colours and added a blur and better wax shader, oh yeah tweaked the flame luminance map as well.

#102

Okay, I poked at it a bit more. Again I thought it was looking pretty good until I came back here and saw the new posts! I’ll get to that in a minute though, first my latest attempt

I tried to take everyone’s advice, and I stole a few ideas from other peoples scenes. I still think the scene is pretty effective, just not compared with some of the compitition here :slight_smile:
The one thing I tried but failed to do was to soften the edges on my shadows a little. There are only two lamp types in Blender that can create soft shadows and they are both directional - The area lamp should give the best results but for me it just created noisy garbage, and the spot lamp is using some ancient scanline based fake shadow casting which also wouldn’t work right for this scene. Again, here is the Blend file for anyone who wants to mess with it: Blend

jmBoekestein: Best flames! Of what I’ve seen here so far yours look the most like candle flames. On the other hand I think the candle material looks to regular and plasticy. It also seems like the candles arn’t a signifigant source of light in your scene. The scene (especially the screen) have some nice night-time lighting going on, it’s just that it is overpowering the candles.

Triker: Great scene, feels very close and candle lit! My only complaint is the candle material - yours is also to regular, and your candles look hard enough to be made of glass!

snippsat: Yours is getting closer, but everything still has a strange artificial feeling to it. The lighting especially feels like bright in door lighting in an office… I don’t have any real advice how to improve it though, sorry.

otacon: Looking really good, the flames look like cutouts of white paper though. Maybe try adding some glow around the flame if they are that bright? Also what is with the nearest girl in that photo? She isn’t lit like the rest of the family and she looks kind of stuck on…

mswertfager: Yours has the most things working together, nothing really jumps out as wrong. Your flames are a little blunt on the end - usually when that happens the candle is also letting off smoke. Also the smoke from your incense is a little wierd - it doesn’t make sense for the smoke to come from a single point when so much of the incense is glowing.

Thanks for the great scene, I’m looking forward to the next challenge :thumbsup:

#103

snippsat - i think your image is beautiful and it just makes me happy to look at it… a magical and very different approach - I love it! something needs to happen to the stick on the plate, i think it needs to be glowing with no smoke possibly, it looks sad compared to the rest.

tricker - i think that vase material is so sublte - i love it! i feel like i can touch it.

i am new to participating in something like this, but it feels great to be sharing my love of 3d with others. although the feedback can be tough to start with, I am really enjoying seeing mine and other peoples work grow - plus seeing all the different takes on the same scene, it’s an inspiration! (and couldn’t fully be appreciated unless you have a go yourself!)

cheers all

seggy

#104

The work in here just keeps getting better. I’m still trying to find time to knock out my next version but I’m really enjoying seeing the work.

Triker - awesome. The reflections on the candles works, the SSS works, the smoke works…it all works. Is there a grain or film effect over the whole scene? It’s got a slight texture/chewy-ness to it that gives it a nice overall tangibility.

MIchael - welcome to the challenge. Way to go the extra mile with the flames. They’re very nice, well worth extra effort. The subtle blue to yellow grad on them is very clean.

Cheers.

#105

Thanks all for the kind words.

kitsune_e—Good observation on the hardness of the candles, I’ll try softening the reflections to give the candles a more waxy look

Seggy—The material of the vase is a simple gradient with reflections and very small bump

barrymcw—Yes I added some grain id post

The smoke is a photo of smoke that I retouched, recolored, knocked out of the background and applied to a poly facing the camera using alpha channel. Adjusted the luminous and transparency channels a bit as well.

#106

Lots of great entries, good work everyone!

I first came upon these challenges while the last one was going and wanted to start participating, so here’s my try at this scene:

Lightwave 9 + FPrime.

Would love any critique you could give.

#107

New render in blender :slight_smile:
kitsun_e nice render, you could use the spot lights, I use them, all you have to do is to make the softness bigger and play with the other buttons,

#108

A quick post with my latest render. Softened the candle shadows (perhaps a bit too much) and added some sort of shadowing for the flames. Changed the wax material a bit. Attempted to change the table top to a yellow silk, not sure how convincing it came out.

#109

Hi,all
sorry 4 my delay 2 replay

@jeremybirn:(but I don’t really get the impression of light coming from the candles yet. Maybe the saturation of the flames is a bit high, too?)
that true , and thx 4 ur openion
@barrymcw :thx 4 ur comments and its ok for borrow it

@ChrRambow :(the candles need some “waxy” material.)
i think i had some problem with flame shade ,and thx 4 openion

@sri : (i think the candle and flame shade need improvement)
agree u ,thx 4 openion

@ lazzhar …-your idea is very good ,and nice light
@ ChrRambow …- no comments ,woderful
@ MasterZap …- candle light is very realistic ,great work
@ glebe digital…-smoke is good idea .I like ur render
@ barrymcw …-good lighting ,good shader
@ Buca …- shader is good
@ kadazil …-blue mood very woderful
@ Seggy… - good job
@ fulg0re …- keep it up
@sri …-I like the lighting and render
@ Barber …- good render and very cool details
@BarberofCivil …-i like ur shade
@kitsune_e…- ,candle flame woderful ,and nice lighting
@snippsat …- woow ,no comment ,woderful
@otacon …- great render and lighting ,good job
@fulg0re…- keep it up ,good job
@mswertfager …-no comment ,woderful
@jmBoekestein …-candle light is very realistic and good render
@Melvil …- light woderful .and good render

#110

Melvil, simply beautiful.

crit, just having some hart time reading the frame, thats all.

#111

I thought i would join in this one.

Only candles have shaders, everything else is default matte/test. Lighting still needs work but happy with the way its going.

Been working with the shadows to get a nice soft shadow, nothing too evident. Maybe i went too far.

Anyway here it is so far

#112

BarberofCivil - Looking good! The one thing that bothers me is the lighting on the table, it seems get very bright and concentrated in one area in the center, then not very bright around some of the other candles?

fulg0re - That’s great. One thing that keeps catching my eye is the contact between the candle holders and the table, or the plate and the table. Maybe you could balance things out with darker shadows or occlusion under them on the table, and a bit of bounce light from the table coming up onto the bottom of the candle holders and plate?

Melvil - Wow! Spot-on! Even the etched picture from looks really believable. If you do another pass at this, the candle flames look a bit too much like solid objects, and maybe could be softer at the edges or something. Also the background, the asian screen, is the one part of your scene where the lighting isn’t as elegantly varied as it could be, some directionality and shadows might help back there.

jmBoekestein - Terrific! I love the flames. One area that could be better is where all the reflections line up on the right edge of the picture, with the vase and candle both hitting right on that side, if you could tweak that, maybe turning the picture a few degrees towards us, so maybe it was just a bit of the candle along the edge, it might be less distracting.

Triker - Terrific! You’ve got a lot of those details nailed, especially that incense and the smoke. The candle wax looks a bit too sharply reflective in places, so it almost looks like the center candle is metal or plastic or something. What’s reflected in the bottom of the picture frame, is it a candle that isn’t lit?

-jeremy

#113

Wow! These are all great entries! I stumbled upon the lighting challenges at the end of the last underwaterchallenge and beginning of this one. Hope to get something on this thread soon. :slight_smile:

#114

i got some different idea :slight_smile:

xsi ( mental ray )

#115

Hi im new here

I want to post something from me ( early stage )

#116

226317813_ded557a1d6_o.jpg1024x768

this is my first try (early stage )

#117

Oh yeah, since I use alot of Softimage XSI Here’s a .scn file if anyone wants to use it.

[b]http://tinyurl.com/fpj79

[/b]

#118

Thanks. That’s from the additive effect of all five candles, if I tone it down a bit, then I start to lose illumination on the screen. I’ll have to play with my light attentuation numbers a bit still. (It’s proabably also partially due to the settings I’m using for my silk material.)

#119

Sorry for my repeating posts :eek:

heres another try

#120

MLoDY,
great take on the scene. Very cool to see something rather different. A few comments:

I wonder if it’s too clean. The book is so aged, I wonder why the table is pristine, why the metal’s untarnished, etc. Given the detail in some parts, the absence in others is off-putting. I’d love see some ash on the clean plate from the insense and maybe some dirt or oil on on the table from the chains being laid on it. And the wood on the framing stuff on the right, the broken window makes me want to see some stains and scratches in the wood.

I do love the reflection in the broken glass.

The smoke coming off the one candle is a great, somewhat un-naturalistic shape. It suggest a magical/occult thing going on as the pattern looks too deliberate to be truly random (not saying smoke couldn’t do that shape, just that it looks intentional).

Nice DOF & moonlit feel on the background.

I wonder if the grain on the table is too big. For some reason the scale on the wood texture looks just a wee bit off. But maybe that’s just me.

The candle glow and flame are very good, you might want to look at the translucency of the candles themselves though. Maybe try, or fake, some SSS on the candle tops to suggest some light rays passing through them.

Cheers.

(new image from me soon, I hope)